


A Part of You Has Made It Here

by northofthehouse



Series: Playing Hide and Seek With Time [1]
Category: EXO (Band), 첫 키스만 일곱번째 | Seven First Kisses (TV)
Genre: Cliffhangers, First Kiss, Fluff, M/M, Magic, Multi, Mystery Character(s), Romance, Sweet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-12
Updated: 2019-08-12
Packaged: 2020-08-19 23:04:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,949
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20217763
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/northofthehouse/pseuds/northofthehouse
Summary: When the mysterious woman said she'd give Chanyeol the world, he never imagined that this was what she meant!





	A Part of You Has Made It Here

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ACatWhoWrites](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ACatWhoWrites/gifts).

> Title is taken from the English lyrics for Nandemonaiya (from Your Name). This is heavily inspired by the mini drama 7 First Kisses.
> 
> FYI: There is a scene where a character almost drowns. There is nothing too graphic, but if that is triggering to you at all, please don't read.

_ Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick. _

Though the clock ticked steadily onward, Chanyeol felt time had never moved so slowly. He had a mere seven minutes left until the end of his shift and it was getting harder and harder to maintain a steady smile.

“Customer service is key,” his boss always said. Since the man wrote Chanyeol’s paychecks, Chanyeol had no choice but to agree.

He glanced at the clock again but the second hand had barely moved. Stifling a sigh, Chanyeol turned to the customer who had just approached the information desk and said, falsely bright, “Hello, madame. Welcome to our casino. How may I assist you this evening?”

She smiled at him, much more genuinely than he’d first smiled at her, and said, “You look tired, dear. I hope you have someone at home to take good care of you.”

It was an odd statement--sweet and invasive all at once--and not the sort of thing Chanyeol usually heard from customers. Most often he got an irritated “How long is this going to take?” or an indignant “Do you know who my father is?” Occasionally, on a good day, Chanyeol got a careless “Enjoy the tip, kid,” or a flippant “You’re lucky I’m in a good mood today, boy.”

He’d never have a customer comment on his personal wellbeing and he wasn’t quite sure how to respond. He also didn’t have anyone at home, as she’d hopefully suggested, so he couldn’t even comment on that. Thankfully, the woman saved him from an awkward “Thank you?” by placing her things to the side of the desk and leaning close to ask “Could you tell me where I could buy a cup of tea, young man? Taking chances makes me thirsty, you know.”

Chanyeol didn’t know--he’d never have enough money to even dream of gambling in the casino where he worked--but he smiled at her anyway. She was sweet, polite despite her obvious wealth, and reminded him a little of his own mother.

“Just this way, ma’am,” he directed, pointing her toward one of the casino’s many dining establishments. “I’m sure they’ll have what you’re looking for.”

She thanked him and, to his surprise, reached across the desk to pat his cheek. “You’re a darling. I’m sure you’ll find what you’re looking for too.”

She waved over her shoulder as she walked away, and for once Chanyeol’s answering smile was real.

_ What a strange woman _ , he thought, though not unkindly, as he yet again glanced at the clock. That interaction had to have taken up at least five of his remaining few minutes, right?

Thankfully, yes, the woman’s stop at the information desk, though relatively brief, had considerably shortened the rest of Chanyeol’s shift. He prepared to log out of his account on the concierge desktop and went to grab his time slip from one of the desk drawers when he noticed a passport wallet on the edge of the desk.

It was the only item there and Chanyeol assumed the woman must have left it accidentally in her hurry for refreshment. He checked his watch--one minute left--and wondered if he could find the customer before his shift ended and he had to rush off to catch his bus. Though he doubted it, Chanyeol grabbed the wallet anyway, waved it in his coworker’s face to indicate where he was going, and took off in the direction he’d sent the woman.

Strangely, she was nowhere to be found. It couldn’t have been more than a minute since she’d walked away from the desk, yet Chanyeol’s extended search for her was fruitless.

Fifteen minutes later, way past the end of his shift and his bus home long missed at this point, Chanyeol made his way back to his post. To his utter surprise, the woman he’d been searching for was there, waiting for him.

“I heard you were looking for me. And quite diligently too,” she commented, seemingly pleased.

“You left your passport,” he responded, a bit out of breath but happy to have found her. He’d never had a passport, never had the money or the freedom to go anywhere but Busan for a day, but Chanyeol knew how important a passport could be.

The customer smiled at him brilliantly and reached up to pat his cheek again. “I’m going to give you the world,” she told him. “Tomorrow you’ll find it all.”

On his ride home, Chanyeol decided that the customer was probably a bit crazy. She clearly had no understanding of personal space and spoke of the future as though she had a hand in it. Still, she’d been unfailingly kind to him, and Chanyeol found himself smiling softly. He was sure that nothing unusual would happen the next day, but that didn’t keep him from dreaming.

All that next day, despite his earlier doubt, Chanyeol couldn’t help but wonder about the customer’s words. His coworker was frustrated to catch him zoning out more than once, and Chanyeol somehow managed to maintain a hopeful expression despite an unusually high number of terrible customers.

As the clock ticked steadily closer to the end of his shift, however, Chanyeol’s flickering hope began to dwindle. At eight minutes to six, he checked the clock and stifled a sigh. There was so little time left for anything wonderful to happen to him today; surely, if the woman’s words had meant something, whatever she’d predicted would have happened already, right?

At seven minutes to six, Chanyeol heard approaching footsteps, looked up, and promptly forgot how to breathe.

Then the man came up to him, smiled fondly, and said, “You ready to go, babe? I can wait here until your shift’s up.” And Chanyeol nearly passed out.

“Babe?” He asked frantically. “You’re talking to me?”

“Yeah,” said his coworker, the annoying one who was always late and never willing to cover any of Chanyeol’s shift. “You’re talking to  _ him _ ?”

The man rolled his eyes but otherwise ignored Chanyeol’s coworker completely. Instead, to Chanyeol, he said, “Are we pretending not to know each other right now? Is this a meet-cute? I can do that.” He stopped, cleared his throat, shook his shoulders back, then stuck out a hand to Chanyeol and said, “Hi, beautiful, I’m Kris. This is the Information Desk, right? For a casino? How about you give me your  _ information _ so we can both get  _ lucky _ ?”

He grinned, clearly proud of himself, and Chanyeol choked in both shock and amusement.

“That was terrible!” He guffawed, forgetting, for a moment, that he’d never met this man before in his life. “Give me your information so we can both get lucky? Has that ever worked for you?”

The man shrugged a shoulder sheepishly and smiled shyly at him. “It worked on you, didn’t it?”

“I guess it did,” Chanyeol replied thoughtfully. “I guess it did.”

A few minutes later, after he’d completed his end-of-shift tasks and put his time sheet back in the appropriate drawer, Chanyeol accepted Kris’ invitation to the casino swimming pool.

“I know you probably don’t want to spend any more time here than you have to,” Kris commented cautiously, “but I also know that the pool here is amazing and I saw a pair of trunks at the gift shop that would look killer on you. Will you go swimming with me, babe? Please?”

Chanyeol looked at the stranger’s puckered lips and widened eyes and couldn’t say no. He couldn’t possibly afford anything sold at this casino though, and said as much to Kris who scoffed and replied that of course Chanyeol was never made to pay for anything when they went out together.

“Just let me treat you, okay?” Kris pleaded. Chanyeol accepted, obviously, even when Kris insisted on drinks and a poolside dinner, along with the original swim shorts and a bracelet Kris had said would look good against Chanyeol’s pale wrist.

“I have to make sure my baby eats well, don’t I?” Kris asked, as if him taking care of Chanyeol was a given. And maybe it was. Chanyeol didn’t know what was happening, but he hoped if some alternate reality version of himself really was dating this wonderful man, that that Chanyeol was appropriately grateful. As it was, Chanyeol was contemplating ways to express his thanks, and the idea of kissing Kris was getting more and more appealing.

But first, swimming. With waggled eyebrows Kris suggested they get in the water to “try out those new trunks, of course.” Chanyeol withheld comment at the obvious pickup line and willingly entered the pool via the staircase at the shallow end.

He was an okay swimmer--had even been an alternate on his high school swim team--but Kris didn’t know that. Smirking to himself, Chanyeol waited until Kris had also gotten in the pool, then playfully danced away from Kris’ reach, slowly making his way into the deep end.

Once there, as Kris got increasingly closer, Chanyeol let himself begin to sink. He flailed his arms dramatically, smacking at the water and opening and closing his mouth as if gasping for air. He kicked his legs out, staying just barely afloat, and cried out desperately for Kris to help him.

In theory, this was a great plan. Chanyeol, too shy to initiate a kiss with someone he didn’t know, would pretend to almost drown, would need mouth-to-mouth, and would then miraculously recover in order to make out with the extremely attractive man who rescued him.

In reality, Kris can’t swim. This was a terrible plan.

Chanyeol ends up stopping his charade when it becomes obvious that Kris’ dog paddling was not going to cut it. The poor man valiantly tried to help Chanyeol but was soon flailing and nearly drowning himself. With considerable effort and a panicked elbow to the face, Chanyeol managed to get his arms around Kris’ torso and dragged him to the edge and out of the pool. He rolled Kris onto his back to begin CPR and was definitely  _ not _ inappropriately disappointed when Kris started coughing up water before Chanyeol could administer mouth-to-mouth.

Instead, he said softly, his face close to Kris’, “I’m glad you’re okay.”

Kris’ answering smile was equally gentle. “You saved my life, babe,” he whispered hoarsely. “Whatever did I do to deserve you?”

Suddenly feeling guilty, Chanyeol mumbled an incoherent “I don’t know,” and moved to stand up.

Kris, though, had other plans. He slipped a hand behind Chanyeol’s neck to keep him from moving away, and, with his eyes trained on Chanyeol’s mouth, instead pulled Chanyeol slowly closer.

Chanyeol watched Kris’ steady approach and closed his eyes before they could cross. He felt the heat of Kris’ breath against his lips and readied himself, pleased that his ill-thought-out plan for kisses was going to work out after all.

“What the hell, man?” His coworker asked, clearly irritated. “This is the third time today that I’ve caught you daydreaming. You’ve got like seven minutes left in this hell-hole. Pull yourself together.”

Chanyeol’s eyes snapped open in shock.

“What the hell?” He reiterated his coworker’s earlier question under his breath. One minute he’d been at one of the casino’s pools, about to be kissed for the first time in a long time, and the next he was back at the information desk with seven minutes left before the end of his shift.

He checked the clock. Well, six minutes left, but close enough. Next, he checked the calendar. Impossibly, it was still the same day it had been before Kris had appeared to sweep Chanyeol off his feet.

What the hell, indeed.

Thought still incredibly confused, Chanyeol decided to go back to the VIP pool once his shift ended. He didn’t know if he’d find Kris there, but he was desperate for anything to help make sense of this whole situation.

As he’d guessed, once Chanyeol timed out and made his way back to the pool, Kris was nowhere to be found. There were a few other big-spending guests lounging along the poolside, one of whom looked Chanyeol up and down and winked at him cheekily, but no one looked familiar. Chanyeol did, however, spot a glint of gold along the floor of the deep end. Remembering the bracelet Kris had given him, Chanyeol took off his shoes, stripped down to his boxers, and dove in.

He was close enough to the bottom to brush his fingers along the floor before he realized that his boxers hadn’t made it. Instead they were floating innocuously along the top of the water, taunting him with his inability to retrieve them without flashing everyone else in the room.

Chanyeol spent a good 30 seconds considering his options before he realized the only thing to do was swim up, grab his boxers, and hope to God no one had noticed.

As if.

When he made it to the top and flipped his hair out of his eyes enough to see, Chanyeol found not his boxers, but the boy who’d winked at him earlier. He was crouched next to the edge of the pool, grinning lewdly at Chanyeol and dangling Chanyeol’s boxers in his right hand, just out of reach.

“Looking for these?” He asked, his voice deceptively innocent.

Chanyeol grumbled about entitled assholes under his breath but, to the boy’s face, smiled his customer service smile and replied, “Yes, sir. May I have them back, please?”

The boy’s smirk grew impossibly wider. “Sir, huh? I like it. What should I call you then?”

Chanyeol kept his smile firmly in place, though it was difficult. “I’m Chanyeol. Please, may I have my shorts back?”

The boy held up his boxers consideringly. “These look more like boxers than swimming shorts to me, Chanyeol,” he said, lazily dragging out the syllables of Chanyeol’s name as he spoke. “Naughty boy.”

“I don’t even know you!” Chanyeol replied indignantly. He was tired of being polite, and besides, he was off the clock.

“But you could!” The boy responded cheerily. “If I give you back your,” he paused a smirked again, “shorts, will you let me buy you a drink?”

“Dick,” Chanyeol said, but nodded anyway, not really seeing an alternative.

A few minutes later Chanyeol was fully dressed, sans his soaked boxers which he had worn only long enough to get to the changing room.

“I saw a bar on my way here,” the boy told him. Chanyeol was fully aware of all the bars in the casino and he didn’t like the look of any of them.

“I actually have a different place in mind,” he said. “If that’s okay.”

The boy beamed. “That’s more than okay, Chanyeol,” he said. “Onward!”

Chanyeol had to laugh at that; the boy was a dork and much less of a douche than he’d originally come across as.

“I don’t get out much,” he told Chanyeol sheepishly, once they’d gotten to Chanyeol’s favorite nearby pub and received their drinks. “Too much money, not enough freedom. Overbearing parents and a pre-planned future. That sort of thing. I’m Sehun, by the way. And I’m sorry about earlier. You don’t actually have to call me sir.”

Chanyeol, who hadn’t used the honorific since the first time and had otherwise avoided referring to the other boy directly, was perfectly happy to just call Sehun by his name.

“Apology accepted, Sehun,” said Chanyeol, ever gracious. “And I don’t get out much either, but that’s mostly for the opposite reasons. Overbearing parents I have; a bunch of money? Not so much.”

Sehun shrugged like it wasn’t a big deal that Chanyeol was perpetually broke.

“I have enough money for both of us.”

“You can’t just say stuff like that,” Chanyeol told him through his laughter. “It makes you seem like an entitled asshole.”

“I  _ am _ an entitled asshole though,” Sehun replied, seemingly unfazed by this description of himself.

Chanyeol smiled at him. It turned out Sehun wasn’t so bad to be around once you got to know him.

“You’re lucky you’re handsome,” Chanyeol said over the edge of his glass.

“Ditto,” Sehun said, then smiled back.

At the end of the night, when they prepared to part ways, Sehun asked Chanyeol if he could kiss him.

“Just a little goodbye peck to remember me by,” he told Chaneyeol cajolingly. “I know we just met, but I already want to see you again.”

Chanyeol wondered if wanting to kiss Sehun made him disloyal to Kris. Then Chanyeol wondered if Kris was ever real to begin with, and he felt a lot less torn about letting Sehun cup his face and pull him close.

Chanyeol gazed at Sehun’s face as he moved closer, and closed his eyes before they could cross. He felt the heat of Sehun’s breath against his lips and readied himself, pleased that Sehun had turned out to be a genuinely good guy, if not a little spoiled.

“What the hell, man?” His coworker asked, clearly irritated. “This is the third time today that I’ve caught you daydreaming. You’ve got like seven minutes left in this hell-hole. Pull yourself together.”

Chanyeol’s eyes snapped open in shock. Not again.

He checked the clock--five minutes until the end of his shift. He checked the calendar--it was still the same day it had always been.

He closed his eyes again and leaned forward on his elbows, resting his head in his hands in utter confusion. What was happening to him?

The sound of a throat clearing dragged him from his misery, and Chanyeol took a deep breath as his customer service smile slipped back into place.

“Hello, sir,” he intoned without looking up. “Welcome to our casino. How may I assist you this evening?”

“Chanyeol?!”

**Author's Note:**

> Hi OP! I loved all of your prompts so I wanted to put them together. And then my inspiration far outgrew my time and we ended up with this. I hope you liked it, regardless!
> 
> Please note that I ended it with the cliffhanger intentionally, because when the original mini drama was coming out, I loved watching it and wondering what was going to happen next. There will be a second and third part to this (with meet-cutes featuring OP's other prompts and preferred pairings), so please subscribe to this and keep an eye out!
> 
> Thank you! <3


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